Performance

We already had a piece on chipsets and performance of the Sony Xperia X in our blog, but now we'll go into more detail.

The phone is powered by a Snapdragon 650 chipset. This means you get the new Cortex-A72 cores - better, faster than the A57 they replace - but only two of them. They are paired with four Cortex-A53's so the chipset is a replacement of the Snapdragon 808 (2x A57 + 4X A53). That said, this chipset is built on the older 28nm process while the Snapdragon 808 was built using the 20nm process.

Despite this fact, in multi-core CPU speed, the Xperia X does better than the LG Nexus 5X with S808, and it even matches the Xperia Z5, which uses an S810 chipset.

GeekBench 3 (multi-core)

Higher is better

Huawei P96558

Xiaomi Mi 55358

Sony Xperia Z54017

Sony Xperia X3796

Sony Xperia M5 Dual3554

LG Nexus 5X3527

HTC One A93209

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)3061

AnTuTu 6 and Basemark OS II 2.0 have a positive view of the performance. They place it well ahead of the HTC One A9 and the Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016), premium mid-rangers that compete for a similar spot as the Xperia X. It's not a flagship but it tops the Xperia Z5.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

Xiaomi Mi 5131758

Huawei P998069

Sony Xperia X77537

HTC One A960324

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)35689

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

Xiaomi Mi 52180

Huawei P92068

Sony Xperia X1714

LG Nexus 5X1591

Sony Xperia Z51482

HTC One A9944

Sony Xperia M5 Dual860

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)833

The chipset also brings a new GPU - Adreno 510. It's a new generation graphics chip, and it only has to drive a 1080p screen. It's not as fast as the Snapdragon 810 graphics, but it does close to double the frames per second of its immediate competitors.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

Xiaomi Mi 545

Sony Xperia Z524

Huawei P918

LG Nexus 5X16

Sony Xperia X14

Huawei Honor 79.2

Sony Xperia M5 Dual8.4

HTC One A96.4

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)5.7

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

Xiaomi Mi 543

Sony Xperia Z525

Huawei P919

LG Nexus 5X17

Sony Xperia X15

Huawei Honor 79.3

Sony Xperia M5 Dual8.7

HTC One A96.7

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)5.7

Basemark X

Higher is better

Xiaomi Mi 533110

Sony Xperia Z523923

Huawei P916942

LG Nexus 5X16609

Sony Xperia X15087

Huawei Honor 79377

Sony Xperia M5 Dual7780

HTC One A96617

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)4947

Basemark X (medium)

Higher is better

Xiaomi Mi 535292

Huawei P929583

Sony Xperia X24687

HTC One A912250

The Adreno 510 supports the latest developments in mobile 3D graphics, so we ran OpenGL ES 3.1 benchmarks as well.

Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal

Higher is better

Xiaomi Mi 5580

Huawei P9341

LG Nexus 5X306

Sony Xperia X251

HTC One A9132

While we would have appreciated the Snapdragon 652 (it has two extra A72 cores), the 650 offers satisfactory performance for a premium midranger. If you're after more bang for the buck, however, the price tag of the X will send you looking elsewhere.